Route 241: Stratford City to Royal Wharf Location: London east, outer Length of bus journey: 5 miles, 27 minutes
Crossrail may have opened four months ago but only yesterday did the last tweak to the bus network take place. Route 241 was finally extended across the Royal Docks from Prince Regent to Royal Wharf, giving residents of the new Thameside estate a link to Crossrail at Custom House. The delay has been while TfL waited for the developers to provide appropriate access and facilities, and given how little they've actually done I'm not sure why it took so long. I went for a first day ride to see how well the extension had been introduced (spoilers - 6 out of 10), and ended up down a dystopian tunnel in a fake flat.
The 241 starts round the back of Westfield, as it has since 2011, its job to whisk shoppers back to Plaistow and estates south of the A13. Weary souls with bulging bags wait alongside budget fliers assembling for a coach ride to Stansted. The Men Who Tweak Bus Stops have done a good job of notifying passengers that route 241 has been extended, with a big poster in the shelter and another on the bus stop promising fresh links at existing frequencies, even if there isn't yet a new timetable. Admittedly you'd have to be mad to take the bus from here to Royal Wharf because the DLR gets there in half the time and is 5p cheaper, but I jump aboard anyway.
We launch off into a 21st century landscape of towers and concealed cuttings, because crossing the railway hereabouts isn't easy. New flats are erupting in the last remaining gaps, other than the awkwardly-shaped coach park reserved for the threatened MSG Sphere which thankfully remains empty. The 241 tackles Stratford's two-way system in the direction you didn't used to be able to go, so is the only route to serve the lonely stop opposite the bus station. We pick up a couple of passengers, plainly heading against the flow, and spin round the gyratory towards West Ham Lane. I note that negotiating Stratford has required two enormous loops to travel what's barely quarter of a mile as the pigeon flies, and has been made more tortuous by 80% of the traffic lights being against us.
Beyond Stratford it gets a lot less snazzy, a lot more Newham. We pass Victorian terraces and lacklustre postwar flats, and parades of shops that sell non-Westfield staples like kitchen roll, flavoured vapes and halal ribs. Only the area immediately around Plaistow station bucks the trend, thrusting upwards with as-yet unoccupied towers, before reassuringly the laundrettes and kebab shops reappear. The 241's role is to peel off down Balaam Street, which I blogged about in January because it's the B116 so won't drone on about again (save to say the fountain in Plaistow Park is no longer frozen over).
Having deposited several passengers in Plaistow proper we continue down New Barn Street, where the boarded-up pub at the foot of Stubbs Point has been demolished since lockdown. Then we swoosh underneath the A13, thanks to the foresight of engineers who built a double-decker-friendly underpass, and find ourselves in the socially lowly environs of Freemasons Road. Crossrail appears at the far end like a visitor from the future, where a horde of gamers is streaming off the upper concourse for a day of button-pressing inside ExCeL. It's barely been 20 minutes but here we are at what used to be the end of the route, which is Prince Regent bus station, which is where every other passenger gets off.
Just me for the extension, then. This is not unusual on Day One, but TfL will be hoping numbers pick up soon. Past allotments growing pylons, past bland hotels for ExCeL delegates staying overnight and across the Connaught Bridge. The views from the top deck are outstanding, specifically the full length of the Royal Docks in both directions, overlooking City Airport at one end and with Canary Wharf rising at the other. To hit the jackpot try to cross as a mini jet roars off overhead. On the opposite side of the docks are the other branch of the DLR, a heck of a lot of flats and the Thames Barrier, not that you can see it, only a bus stop named after it. And then finally we turn into Royal Wharf.
I've been writing about this mega-estate since 2017, a densely-packed upthrust of 3000 modern homes only 17% of which are affordable because screw the locals. It got its Starbucks early, then a Sainsbury's, later a river pier and eventually a pub. But only this weekend has it got its bus route, a double decker looping one-way round the full half-mile of Royal Crest Avenue. We get some startled looks, including one resident whipping out his phone to snap the alien phenomenon and another eyeing up the bus with a leery 'phwoar' as if he's spotted a big-bosomed woman. Life aboard the bus is less fun thanks to innumerable speed humps and also wondering whether we'll ever reach a bus stop.
Because they've only erected the one stop, it seems, not quite anywhere near the shops. Everyone who needs the bus instead has to walk over to the edge of the pocket park, opposite the coffee shop and overlooked by a windowful of puffing gymgoers, which is one of the few bits of roadside that isn't also a car parking space. Here buses terminate before returning round the loop so there should be a big yellow-edged rectangle saying Bus Stand but instead it says Bus Stop and has room for just one vehicle. There's no bench and no shelter either, despite the fact the driver won't let you aboard until he's finished his snacks and is ready to depart.
And most self-destroyingly, no timetable. Various residents come over to stare at the amazing new bus stop - it wasn't here last week - but nothing has been posted behind the glass to tell them where services might be going. All that effort in extending a bus route to pastures new but The Men Who Tweak Bus Stops have failed to provide the most basic of information. Even the yellow 'route extension' poster they've added at stops along the original route would have been wildly helpful but nobody thought to add it here, and that was a clientele lost. Hey folks you can now get to Crossrail in six stops, they should have screamed, but hopefully residents will work that out later.
I've arrived on the day of the Royal Wharf Summer Fete, a somewhat upbeat claim given it's now autumn. On the adjacent lawn a ring of stalls displays artsy craftsy things, the local fitness crew seek new members and entertainers are over-exciting a handful of small children with party games. Nearer the river a cluster of food trucks offer vegan pizza for 9.5, presumably pounds, and an excess of specially-hired litter pickers wander the promenade brandishing empty binbags. It's just like any other local community fete except it's been funded by housing developers so visitors are being handed branded plastic water bottles and free glasses of prosecco.
The latest development they're trying to flog is called Riverscape and fills a thin sliver alongside Lyle Park. To reach the show flat you enter a mysterious black tunnel on the waterfront, more reminiscent of a theme park than a housing estate, and keep walking into the symmetrical gloom towards a distant light. Then at the far end you step to one side and through a door into a gorgeously laid-out interior with stunning views across the Thames towards Docklands. "Are you looking to buy?" asks the saleswoman, and I confess I'm not but it does look very nice and she just smiles.
Afterwards I walk down the pier and see the deception for what it is. The show flat isn't one of the apartments they're building here, it's a single-storey box dropped on the promenade much closer to the river than anyone one will actually live, so an evil sham. The tunnel is just a cunning way to disorient visitors because by the time you reach the end you have no idea where you are, or that you're standing in a prefab on the waterfront, you just think 'wow'. They've even built a wall around the entrance to the tunnel so you can't see past or over, and in summary what I'm saying is that a bunch of sly bastards have now got a regular bus service, and that's the only 241 offer you'll find round here.
Route 241: Stratford City to Royal Wharf
